


this city with the safety of a never-ending blessing

by nex_et_nox



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dragons, POV Multiple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-04 08:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4131030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nex_et_nox/pseuds/nex_et_nox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Surprise," Bucky said. "I picked up a glass ball from some lady when I was eight and now it's hatched into..." He closed his eyes like it physically pained him to say it. "A dragon."</p>
<p>"So dragons are real now?" Steve asked weakly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this city with the safety of a never-ending blessing

i.

It was at a sale. A woman was moving out and she was giving away some of the clutter of her home, saying she no longer had need of it. Even with so little money on him, Bucky found himself poking around, looking at the various odds and ends she had accumulated. Then something caught his eye and for some reason, Bucky found himself inexplicably drawn to it.

It a ball, made of a beautiful blue glass or _something_ …

He picked it up, feeling the odd weight and strange texture, and almost dropped it as the woman approached him. Bucky made to put it back, sure that it was too expensive, but the woman shook her head and smiled knowingly as she pressed it into his hands, refusing any payment.

“Take care of it,” was all she said.

Bucky found himself nodding in solemn agreement before hurrying back home. He glanced over his shoulder, once, seeing the wistful look on her face as he left.

 

ii.

Bucky hid it in his room for years, keeping it away from the prying hands of his sisters. He didn’t know why this fist-sized ball meant so much to him, but he didn’t want anyone else near it.

He took it out periodically, cleaned it off and studied it.

He still didn’t know what it was, but sometimes he imagined it was warm. He rolled it around in his hands or set it out on the windowsill when he was sure that no one would be coming in and let the sun shine down on it, but despite all of that, he sometimes thought that it was warmer than either of those could account for.

 

iii. 

When he moved out of his family’s apartment and moved in with Steve, he took the ball with him. The idea of leaving it behind never even crossed his mind.

No matter how much he trusted and cared for Steve, though, he took as much pain to hide it from him as he had his sisters.

 

iv.

Bucky was good at hiding things. Good at hiding the way that he wanted to stare at Steve, the way desire sometimes hit him in the way that Steve would smile at something Bucky said or pick himself up after a brawl, the way that he’d been in love with Steve Rogers for years and years.

He was good at hiding physical things too, like the ball…or the draft letter.

That wasn’t hiding, though. One read through was enough, every awful word memorized in its stark formality, before he burned the letter and buried his head in his hands.  

He told Steve he enlisted.

As he packed for training and then the war itself, he made sure to slip the little glass ball in with everything else.

He kept it with the rest of his personal effects, wrapped up securely in an extra shirt.

He took it out sometimes, when he was sure he was alone, and rolled it around in his hands. He couldn’t pretend the heat of it was anything other than real now, but he let the warmth comfort him and made himself believe that back in Brooklyn, Steve was doing well.

 

v.

After Azzano and Steve and managing to duck out of going to the medics’ tent—

_zola leaning over him 32557038 oh god it **hurts**_

—Bucky went to his tent and sat shakily down on his bed, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes as if that could erase everything. His bed was still precisely made, exactly the way he’d left it before Azzano, and from a cursory glance, no one had messed with any of his things.

Overcome with a sudden desperation, he dug through to the bottom of his bag and pulled out the balled up shirt. He unrolled it, carefully, and stared down at the ball. His breath caught.

There were fine cracks running along it, coming from the center, where the largest crack of all was. It was so deep he almost couldn't believe that the ball hadn't already broken in two.  

"No," he breathed out. It had been _safe_ , but somehow it had managed to get cracked. He could have _sworn_ that no one had messed with his things, but maybe they had, maybe he hadn't recalled correctly how he had laid everything out, maybe his memory wasn't to be trusted anymore—

_because of what zola did_

_shut up_

Bucky forcibly made himself shut off the panicked thoughts and laid one hand onto the ball, tracing fingers over the crack. He misjudged how sharp the edges of it were, though, and it sliced through the pad of one of his fingers.

"Ow," he hissed in pain. Cutting himself on glass was somehow hilariously painful in this moment, even after— _stop thinking about it._  

The ball suddenly burned white hot.

"Shit!" he yelped, moving his hand completely away and dropping the shirt and the broken glass onto his bed. He stood up, moving away from it, and stared down as the ball – no, the egg, what the hell, was this an _egg_? –cracked into clean pieces with the ringing sound of a clear bell and the shattering of glass.

Something rose out of it.

It wasn't a corporeal figure. Instead, it was misty and insubstantial, but Bucky could still make out the shape: long and thin, curling in and around itself like a snake or some king of lizard, but it had intelligent eyes, set forward in the way that meant predator. Spindly little nubs of what might be horns adorned the top of its head and...

It had wings.

"What the fuck," Bucky said.

 

vi.

"Steve," Bucky hissed, "I need to talk to you."

Steve let Bucky lead him away from his tent and paperwork—Phillips' revenge, since he had to punish Steve _somehow_ —and towards the edge of camp.

"What's going on, Buck?" he asked, as they halted.

"I don't know," Bucky said, swallowing nervously. "I think I need to just...show you."

"Are you okay?" Steve asked intently.

"I'm fine," he said immediately. "It's...look." He turned and gestured softly at something. "C'mere," he said, coaxingly. "You want to meet my buddy Steve?"

At first, Steve didn't know what Bucky was doing. He didn't see anything there, either in the trees or on the ground, until suddenly he _did_. There was a fine shape making its way through the grass, an ethereal pale blue, almost white, and even though it looked like some kind of snake or lizard, if the insubstantiality of it hadn't tipped Steve off, the way that it chirruped and suddenly wrapped itself up and around Bucky left no doubt. The creature was suddenly more _present_ somehow, more solid, and the shades of blue tinting it darkened, like it was fading into reality and color.

"What...?" Steve mouthed helplessly.

And then he noticed the wings.

"Surprise," Bucky said. "I picked up a glass ball from some lady when I was eight and now it's hatched into..." He closed his eyes like it physically pained him to say it. "A dragon."

"So dragons are real now?" Steve asked weakly.

"You're one to talk, Mr. 'I Joined the Army,'" Bucky told him.

 

vii.

In the end, they decided that there was nothing to do other than try to keep it a secret for as long as possible. But before heading back to the center of camp, there were a few other pressing matters to deal with.

"Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?" Steve asked.

Bucky spluttered. "How would I know how to check for a dragon's sex?" he asked furiously.

"Well, you're its parent now," Steve said virtuously.

Bucky slugged him on the shoulder.

"Also, you need to name it," Steve added.

"Brooklyn's a girl," Bucky retorted immediately. At the look on Steve's face, he said, "Don't make me punch you again, Rogers, because I most definitely will, don't think I won't."

"You didn't actually check to make sure she was a girl," Steve said, grinning a little.

"HOW COULD I CHECK?" Bucky howled, leaping at Steve.

Which was how Peggy found them: Steve fending off Bucky, while the newly-named Brooklyn was sitting on the ground a few feet away from the fight, chortling to herself. To Peggy’s credit, her double-take was less pronounced than Steve's had been, and certainly more quiet than Bucky's.

"That's enough!" Peggy called out sharply. Steve detangled himself from Bucky immediately, standing straight up and flushing a little.

"Peggy," he said. "Er, Agent Carter...we..."

Bucky too was standing, his eyes darting between Brooklyn and Peggy.

"Why," Peggy started, "do you have a winged lizard with you?"

Brooklyn chirruped cheerfully and leapt into the air, her wings spreading gently as she swept herself up and onto Bucky's shoulders. She draped herself around his neck, long tail dangling down his chest, and looked inordinately pleased with herself, though she was giving a certain look to Peggy that emphasized _exactly_ how much she understood of what the woman had just said.

"A dragon," Peggy corrected flatly, interpreting the expression easily. " _Why_ do you have a dragon?"

 

viii.

"Just...don't spread knowledge of her around," Peggy said, several minutes later, rubbing at her temples. "I'll talk with Colonel Phillips." She turned and strode away, not speaking quietly enough that they couldn't hear her as she bit out, " _Dragons_. In our _camp_. Only Americans."

Bucky snorted softly.

 

ix.

Brooklyn’s rather insubstantial nature meant that it wasn't as hard as it could have been to hide her. She seemed to understand human language unerringly well, though she couldn't speak it herself.

"I'd be a little alarmed if she could, honestly," Steve said. Bucky laughed a little, because he couldn't help but agree. Dragons, fine, yeah, he could deal with that. A dragon that could _talk_ would be a little too much.

At any rate she would willingly play along, hiding underneath Bucky's bunk and blending herself with the shadows or simply entertaining herself on the fringes of the camp, darting through the woods. Brooklyn also managed to keep herself fed, though Bucky certainly didn't refrain from sneaking her some of his scraps when he could get away with it – generally bits of meat, because he wasn't honestly sure what a dragon was supposed to eat. Nonetheless, she appeared to be eating enough, given she seemed to be steadily growing.

Colonel Phillips was completely unimpressed by the fact that they had a dragon among their soldiers now, but he didn't tell Bucky off, just repeated Agent Carter's directive to try to keep Brooklyn away from any prying eyes.

Bucky was only too happy to comply.

 

x. 

"You could go home," Steve told him in the bar. "I could ask, if you wanted..."

Bucky grimaced. "Leave you here? And take a goddamn _dragon_ to the city, Steve?"

Steve shrugged a little, staring down into his drink for a long moment before he looked back up at Bucky. "Do you really want to stay here though, Bucky?"

_I love you,_ Bucky thought tiredly. _No, I don't want to stay, but I love you, and you’ve never run from anything in your goddamned life._ "Yes," he said instead.

 

xi.

Everything changed once they formed the Howling Commandos. There was no way that Brooklyn could be kept secret from the rest of them, and anyway, Bucky didn't _want_ to keep her secret. She deserved to be acknowledged in more than the tiny bits of time that Bucky could generally spare. With the Commandos, they were on the move enough and going through enemy territory so often that another set of eyes could only be advantageous, and with these men Steve had picked out...

Bucky had served with several of them already, and he trusted Steve's judgment for the rest.

"I want you all to meet Brooklyn," Bucky said bluntly, the night they'd set out for their first mission. Everyone was seated around the fire, eating, but Bucky hadn't started yet, waiting to introduce Brooklyn and eat _with_ her.

"Your hometown?" Dum Dum asked.

"No," Bucky said, smirking, and whistled out the cadence that he and Brooklyn had created. She swept out of a tree high above them, plunging into full corporeality and onto Bucky's shoulders in one gleeful move. She trilled at the Commandos. "My dragon."

 

xii.

Aside from a few sideways glances and a _lot_ of curious questions, the Commandos actually accepted Brooklyn quite calmly, to Bucky's pleasant surprise.

Steve smirked at him from across the fire.

 

xiii.

Being a sniper was a bit of a lonely job; he was far away from everyone else, and he had to keep track of all his surroundings. He had to watch out for himself, while at the same time picking off anyone that was trying to take out his team. It was taxing work, but it was...good.

It helped that Brooklyn was a constant presence, usually curled up on his back or by his side and helping keep watch of the area right next to Bucky, so that he could focus more on keeping the Commandos safe from any sneaks.

When they wrapped up their missions, she jumped onto his shoulders or he scooped her up and helped her settle there. In many ways, she was almost like a cat, including the rumbles in the back of her throat that were so similar to purrs that Bucky almost couldn't tell any difference.

It was very comforting.

 

xiv.

The first time that Brooklyn burped out a little bit of fire they all looked as surprised as she did.

Monty immediately declared that she was going to help him setting off explosives from now on – when she wasn't with Bucky, of course.

Brooklyn looked a little too pleased with this idea for Bucky's taste.

 

xv.

Bucky couldn’t even begin to think about how thankful he was that Brooklyn seemed to be growing fairly slowly. She was approaching the size of a midsized housecat now, but that was _nothing_. Had she been the size that knights in stories went up against, or even the size of a horse, there would be no way that she could hide herself.

There would be no way that she would be able to travel around with them.

Brooklyn was vastly important to Bucky. He had unknowingly carried around her egg for over a decade and a half, and even then she had been pulling him in. Now that she had hatched and made her presence known, Bucky was attached.

It wasn't just that she kept watch for him while he was sniping. It was the way that she curled up with him at night, her body warm against his own. It was the way she rumbled comfortingly when he woke up from nightmares, the way that she cheerfully played with all the Commandos, the way she posed for Steve to sketch her.

She couldn't be in any of the films or propaganda photos; instead, she misted away, peeking out from around the corners of things in the distance when she was sure she wouldn't get caught. Bucky always made sure to try to make it up to her in any way he could when the shoots were over and when all the interlopers had left. He scratched under her chin at a certain spot, and Brooklyn flopped boneless against him, the almost-purring rumbles loud and happy.

Bucky didn't know what he would do if Brooklyn hadn't been allowed to come with them.

 

xvi.

As Bucky fell, behind the fear all he could think of was how thankful he was that he made Brooklyn stay at HQ for this mission. He hadn’t wanted Zola to even catch a _glimpse_ of her.

_i don’t want to die god brooklyn steve i’m sorry i love you—_

 

xvii.

Brooklyn liked Peggy as well as she liked any of the Commandos. Peggy spent enough time with the Commandos between missions – and even occasionally on them – that Brooklyn was familiar enough with her to be comfortable with Peggy scratching underneath her chin and picking her up to carry her places. She absolutely refused to ride on anyone’s shoulders except Bucky’s, however.

She hadn’t wanted to be left behind on this mission, Peggy could see that from the slump of her tail and the way that she let her wings drag a little. When Peggy showed her their maps and explained how important this mission was, the same way that Bucky had, it helped a little. Still, Brooklyn was more listless than Peggy had ever seen her.

Then, suddenly, Brooklyn’s head shot straight up. Her wings flared behind her violently, and she _keened_.

Peggy suspected, but it wasn’t until the Commandos returned, minus one member, that she knew.

 

xviii.

“He must have damn well thought you were worth it,” Peggy said fiercely to Steve, standing there in that blown out bar.

“I’m not going to stop until every member of HYDRA is dead,” Steve said.

“Take Brooklyn with you,” Peggy said, “You’re all she has left now.”

Steve flinched.

 

xix.

Practice and experience had made Brooklyn’s reach with fire longer and her flames stronger, but her grief and anger lent even more strength to her than Steve had ever seen. She was able to burn or distract the men on the Valkyrie easily.

No one expected a dragon.

Then, in the end, Brooklyn wouldn’t leave him. She wrapped herself firmly but carefully around Steve’s shoulders, the way that she always laid herself on Bucky, and they hit the water together.

 

xx.

(It took a while for the wipes to be effective, but they – Zola – were determined. Finally, finally, they began to see promise. Their methods were working.

Even so, the asset clung on to two words for a long, long time before they managed to erase them as well.

“Steve,” the asset said. “Brooklyn.”)

 

xxi. 

(They quickly learned that the entire borough of Brooklyn was a no-go zone. Even mentioning the _name_ of it caused the asset’s programming to start breaking down, especially if he had already been out of the ice for a while.

Only once had they been foolish enough to assign the asset a mission in Brooklyn; it took them almost a week and a half to find him again. They left him on ice for years longer than usual, as punishment, and threw themselves into making their programming technology more efficient.)

 

xxii.

(“What the hell is that?” one of the doctors wondered as they starting the slow process of thawing out Captain America’s body. He stared at whatever it was that was wrapped around the Captain’s shoulders.

“Some kind of lizard?” another one said, leaning in to take a closer look. “Komodo dragon, maybe? It’s big.”

“Doesn’t look like any Komodo dragon _I’ve_ ever seen,” the first doctor said doubtfully.)

 

xxiii.

(When Fury found out that Captain America was alive – and that the lizard wrapped around his shoulders somehow was as well – he had a decision to make.

He narrowly decided against locking up the lizard. He wanted to make Rogers as comfortable as possible, in the hopes that he’d listen to SHIELD.

A gesture of faith – like his pet lizard – might go a long way.)

 

xxiv.

Steve woke up to the rasp of Brooklyn’s tongue on his face and the sound of a baseball game playing on the radio. He sat up slowly.

“Brooklyn,” he said to the dragon in his lap. He scratched carefully under her chin, where he’d always seen Bucky—

Brooklyn nudged her head against his hand as his fingers twitched at the reminder of everything he was trying to forget. Her head…that was rather larger than he remembered. She had grown noticeably, to a size that was definitely larger than the average housecat, even an average _large_ housecat.

Between that and the radio game, he didn’t need more than a few words from the fake nurse before he realized what this was – a trap.

Brooklyn was larger and heavier than she had been before, but the serum worked well, so she wrapped herself in her customary position as he broke out. She chortled darkly at the shouts behind them, tucking her head against his neck.

 

xxv.

It wasn’t healthy to spend so much time in the gym, destroying one punching bag after another, but Steve didn’t know what else to do with himself. Peggy was alive, in a retirement facility down in DC, while Dernier was in France, doting on his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

He couldn’t bring himself to try to make his way to either of them. They had moved on and lived full lives while he had been in the ice, and he didn’t know how to face them. The both of them deserved to know, but—

The latest punching bag crashed to the ground, and Brooklyn swooped down from her place in the rafters to land softly on one shoulder. Steve leaned some with her weight before compensating.

“Sorry,” he told her softly. While he was in the gym, she typically hid herself up in the rafters, not coming down unless one or both of them needed comfort. Steve was grieving, but Brooklyn was grieving as well. He had to take care of her.

They were the only people either of them really had left.

They were the only people alive who still remembered and loved and mourned Bucky Barnes.

 

xxvi.

Brooklyn didn’t like Nick Fury much more than Steve did. She spat a glob of fire onto the picture of the Tesseract.

“You should have left it in the ocean,” Steve said, and left with his – Bucky’s – dragon.

 

xxvii.

Brooklyn wasn’t comfortable with the attention of the people on the quinjet. She stayed wrapped around Steve’s shoulders, but she faded, almost becoming see-through. She couldn’t quite move through walls, but she was definitely lighter and could become nearly invisible if she wanted.

Steve made small talk with Agent Coulson, and if he was a little uncomfortable with the man’s blatant hero worship of him, at least the man wasn’t staring so hard at Brooklyn.

 

xxviii.

Agent Romanoff didn’t blink at Brooklyn – she was SHIELD and probably had already been briefed. Dr. Banner, on the other hand, was torn between shaking Steve’s hand and staring at the dragon on his shoulders.

“Um…?” he said.

“Brooklyn,” Steve said shortly. She lifted her head and met Banner’s eyes, chuffing quietly in greeting, before dropping her head again. She had been sleeping a lot, Steve noticed, often on him. He didn’t know what to do for her – she had always been so excitable, but now she was lethargic sometimes in ways that were worrying. 

Of course, he wasn’t one to talk. All he did now was waste his time in various gyms.

“Right,” Banner said, choosing to not press.

 

xxix.

Both he and Banner assumed Romanoff meant the ship was a submarine, and Steve had a heartstopping moment of panic for about two seconds. He had spent enough time underwater in ships. He wasn’t exactly eager to spend more time there.

The ship lifted into the air, which was marginally better. Steve let out a long, slow breath and scratched at Brooklyn’s head, which she had lifted at the way that his pulse must have skyrocketed.

“I’m fine,” he told her soothingly as he and Dr. Banner followed Agent Romanoff inside. Steve cast one last long look at the sky encircling them as the ship rose into the air, then made himself look away.

 

xxx.

“Looks like we’re going back to Germany,” Steve muttered to Brooklyn, sitting in a different quinjet en route to intercept Loki. “Barely gone from it for a few weeks…”

Brooklyn grumbled to herself, claws flexing against Steve’s uniform.

Dealing with Loki was easier than it should have been. Steve blocked the initial shot, and then Brooklyn came down more like a banshee rather than a dragon, squalling at the top of her lungs. They hadn’t tag teamed during the war, much less against an alien, but they worked well together. Brooklyn flew interference while Steve attacked with his shield.

Stark showing up put an end to the fight earlier than Steve and Brooklyn would have been able to on their own, but something about the situation felt _wrong_. Brooklyn’s agitated movements as they got Loki onto the quinjet and started flying back only solidified Steve’s feeling.

 

xxxi.

“You’re pretty spry for an older fellow,” Stark said. “What’s your thing? Pilates? Or is that just part and parcel for the Dragonriders of Pern?”

“What?” Steve asked. _Are there other dragons?_

“It’s like calisthenics. And it’s a book series, you should probably read it. You might have missed a few things, you know, doing time as a Capsicle.”

Steve narrowed his eyes.

 

xxxii.

Stark was a lot like his father, immediately jumping into things without thinking about chain of command. Which, admittedly, could sometimes be a good thing – Peggy had enlisted Howard to get Steve to Azzano for a reason, after all. But this Stark was purposefully trying to push all of Steve’s buttons and he _really_ didn’t care for it.

“Come on, Brooklyn,” he said lowly, pulling on a parachute of his own and making his way toward the ramp.

“These guys come from legends. They’re basically gods,” Romanoff told him from the cockpit.

“Dragons are legends too,” Steve said, and jumped.

 

xxxiii.

Brooklyn hissed furiously from Steve’s shoulder as he entered the fight, flaring her wings viciously behind her, and something in Thor’s expression changed. They grabbed Loki and headed back to the quinjet, but Steve was filled with the uncomfortable certainty that had the Asgardian not been looking after his brother, he wouldn’t have looked away from Brooklyn.

That a hint of the same interest was lurking in Loki’s eyes did nothing to comfort him.

“I did not know there were such creatures on Midgard,” Thor said to him later. “On other realms, certainly, but…”

“Not here,” Steve nodded. Brooklyn’s claws flexed anxiously against him, her tail curling defensively.

“Peace, little one,” Thor said, noticing her agitation. “I mean you no harm. I was merely curious. Where did you find…him? Her?”

“Her,” Steve said, and swallowed. “She – my friend. He had her egg. She hatched during the war.”

A moment passed between them, before Thor dipped his head and addressed them both, reading the words unsaid. “I am sorry for your loss,” he said solemnly. “I hope your friend is sitting now in blessed Valhalla, as befitting of a warrior.”

“Thank you,” Steve said tightly, and couldn’t bring himself to say anything more. Thor gave them another slow nod and strode away.

 

xxxiv.

Steve didn’t mean to let Stark get to him, and Brooklyn was holding him back as well as she could, muttering lowly and pressing her head up against him, but he was just so lost and _angry_ —

As soon as all of this was over and done with, he was going to find a way to get rid of that staff permanently. SHIELD couldn’t be trusted with it even if he had wanted them to have it, given what they had done with the Tesseract.

Then the explosion rocked the Helicarrier and one of its turbines was failing and they were falling out of the sky. Steve allowed himself one moment of absolute terror – _crashing into the ice with Brooklyn around his shoulders oh god they were going to die here –_ before he forcedhimself to move, to help Tony, while Brooklyn flew interference.

After, everything moved too quickly for him to have the luxury of sitting down and letting himself fall apart. Coulson was dead and Loki was setting an army on New York and they just didn’t have _time_ for Steve to be falling apart. That could wait until everything was done with. One way or another.

 

xxxv.

Brooklyn loved shawarma.

 

xxxvi.

Steve didn’t stick around after making sure that Loki was sent off to Asgard, and he didn’t take up Tony’s offer to live in the Tower. He just – he couldn’t do that. Not right now.

Instead, he went to Brooklyn.

“He always promised he’d take you here, didn’t he?” he said to the dragon on his shoulders. She was looking around curiously at everything, head whipping back and forth. “This is where we lived. He named you for it.”

But everything was different now. So few of the places he remembered were here anymore. The people were still the same for the most part – same attitude, at least – but the clothing, the hair, all things that should have been familiar to Steve…weren’t.

_You were supposed to be the one doing this,_ he thought. _You were so excited to show her everything._

_You’re supposed to be here, Bucky._

xxxvii.

They ended up working with SHIELD. They didn’t really have any other options. Steve’s only stipulation was that Brooklyn go on all missions with him that she feasibly could.

“She served with us in the war,” he told Fury, unwilling to compromise on this. “We’re used to working together, and I’m not leaving her behind.”

Fury sighed heavily. “You and your overgrown lizard are a pain in the ass, Rogers,” he said.

Brooklyn could make approximations of smiles, in the ways that she showed her teeth and tilted her head.

This was not a smile.

 

xxxviii.

A few more times visiting Brooklyn was all that Steve could stand. The entirety of New York itself was claustrophobic. They had been living at SHIELD headquarters for the most part, but it was easy to make the decision to transfer to DC. The Triskelion was there, and Peggy’s nursing home wasn’t far away either.

Most of all, it wasn’t New York. Everything there was new to Brooklyn, but to Steve, it was full of reminders, of differences. Nothing was the same; it made him feel trapped and frustrated.

So they moved.

DC was better. Dupont Circle was better. Steve finally felt like he could breathe a little better. New York had been one long asthma attack, where he kept gasping and trying to stay calm and pulling in air to Bucky’s steady breaths—

Except Bucky wasn’t there anymore. And that was the whole problem.

Steve left off visiting the gyms. Instead, he spent his energy on different kinds of training – martial arts and gymnastics that had been developed between the years, anything that could help him on missions and keep his mind off of everything. And he started running.

He’d never been able to run before. Asthma, flat feet, his heart, so many of his other health problem – none of them had let him. He could try, but he’d always end up collapsing afterwards, leaving Bucky to pick him up and drag him back home.

Now, though.

Now, he could run for _miles_ and he was barely out of breath. He was fast and strong and it was _easy_ for him. During the war he had always been running with his men or pulling off some other covert mission, so he hadn’t had the opportunity. What it meant for him in the here and now was he pushing himself, trying to make himself feel something, anything.

And trying to make himself _forget_.

Because Brooklyn came with him sometimes, he went most times when it was still dark outside, so that she could hide herself against the backdrop of the early morning sky. She flew behind him, easily keeping up with him.

She was with him the first time that he met Sam, gleefully trailing overhead as he kept lapping the other man. At the edges of his hearing, Steve could make out her quiet chuffs of laughter and could imagine the expression on her face. He grinned to himself and pushed himself just the littlest bit faster, trying to contain the laughter in his own voice as he lapped Sam again.

"On your left," he called out.

"Oh, come on!"

Sam didn't ask any questions about Brooklyn while they were talking, just told him about the VA and then let him go as Natasha pulled up to the curb. Brooklyn jumped into the backseat as Steve ducked into the car, and they were off for their next mission.

 

xxxix

Steve wasn't really that nervous around aircraft now – though if he had to actually pilot one, that might change – and he hadn't had many other incidents like on the Helicarrier, when he had thought they would be going down instead of up, so he felt free to jump from the plane, to let all his worries fall away as he fell towards the ocean, Brooklyn a dart of dark blue as she dove down with him.

Still, the chill of the ocean hit him hard and for a moment he imagined what it would be like if he didn't come up, or if he hadn't made it after crashing the Valkyrie. If everything would be like when he was sleeping under the ice, just quiet and dreamless and _peaceful_.

But he had a mission to complete, so he swam up to the surface where Brooklyn was hovering, waiting for him, and made his way onto the ship.

 

xl.

"Oh, Angie would have loved to meet Brooklyn," Peggy said wistfully, scratching under the chin of the dragon that was curled up in her lap. She had mentioned that before, one of the first times that they had come by, and when Steve asked she had told them both wonderful stories about the two of them, the early days of SHIELD, and Howard Stark's mishaps. The next time they came, Peggy was having a bad day and could barely remember anything about her.

"I bet she would have," Steve agreed, smiling a little. Honestly, he wouldn't have minded meeting Angie Martinelli and seeing the amazing woman Peggy had described to him.

"Dragons, Steve," Peggy said, her face stretching into a wide a smile. "Dragons! Oh, she would have been so happy. To know that there are such wonderful creatures in the world, to know that they exist...I almost can't believe it myself. Did you know, the kids always said I was making up stories?"

Steve laughed. "I can't imagine why."

"Gabe kept mum," Peggy scowled. "He never took my side, even though he knew Brooklyn as well as I!"

Steve laughed again, but he couldn't help the pang at the thought that Gabe was gone, along with almost all of the Commandos, and that he hadn't been here for anything of the events that Peggy could recall clearly enough to tell him. He couldn't share in the memories, only hear them secondhand.

"How is it in SHIELD these days?" Peggy asked, still sharp eyes glinting.

Brooklyn grumbled, somewhere between tired and annoyed, and Steve leaned back in his chair. "That about says it all, doesn't it?" he said, trying to keep his tone light. "But you should be proud of yourself, Peggy..."

 

xli.

They got odd looks, whenever Steve went anywhere in public with Brooklyn. People didn't usually walk around with lizards on their shoulders, especially ones almost the size of Maine Coons, and if anyone took a closer look at Brooklyn, they quickly realized that her size wasn't the _only_ thing odd about her. She hadn't appeared in any of the propaganda, so no one recognized her from that, which Steve had mixed feelings about. It would have allowed people to let her into places that Steve usually couldn't get her into, but she didn't like the attention that other people paid to her very much. She didn't even like the attention that SHIELD paid her.

At any rate, Steve didn't go places with Brooklyn often unless he was sure that he could get her in, that she would be welcomed where he was going. Just from the one meeting with him, Steve felt that Sam was someone who would let them in. He hadn't made any comments when meeting Steve, hadn't stared at Brooklyn, had invited him to the VA without pressuring him—

And he was good with his people. Kind.

Steve could use kind.

SHIELD was a business of spies and killers and soldiers. Sam was a soldier, too, but a different type; more similar to Steve than to SHIELD, and Steve wanted that. He wanted a connection to people again, but he didn't have any idea of how to talk with people anymore, how to connect. He might tell Natasha that he was too busy for dating, but in all honesty? He was tired.

Sam and the VA seemed like it might be a good place to maybe, finally, be able to relax a bit. At the very least, he could check it out. So, just after the Lemurian Star, he had made a point to drop by the VA – and that was where he'd seen Sam, being so calm and comforting.

True to Steve's expectations, Sam hadn't even blinked at Brooklyn's presence on his shoulder. Had, instead, drawn him into conversation, had even managed to make Steve _laugh_. He hadn't laughed in...a while. Not like that. So somehow, Steve let himself take a leap of faith.

"She was Bucky's," he told Sam, throat tight. Brooklyn's claws kneaded against his shoulders, not quite distressed, but sad. "Brooklyn hatched during the war, and she was with us for all of the time that the Howling Commandos were together. After he fell..."

Sam didn't have pity on his face. Thank _god_ , it wasn't pity.

"We went down on the Valkyrie together," Steve finished, looking away.

"I have Riley's dogtags," Sam said. "And that helped. But the first time that I went to his home, after, to talk with his mom, his dog just came running out to greet him – I guess because I probably smelled like him still, we spent so much time together and swapped so many clothes...well. It hurt. He used to carry pictures of that mutt around with him all the time and show them to everyone and I just realized, he would never see that dog again."

Steve blinked, hard.

 

xlii.

Brooklyn was shifting her weight back and forth while Steve was talking with Kate, but he didn't really think anything of it until Kate mentioned it herself – "I think you left your stereo on."

"Someone's in there?" he asked, almost soundlessly. "One or more?"

Brooklyn started to bob her head into a nod, but shifted it into a side-to-side tilt instead, unsure.

"At least one," Steve said, unsurprised. "Okay."

They crept quietly through the window, Steve letting Brooklyn pour in before him and start making her own stealthy way towards the living room of their apartment. Her claws clacked only the tiniest bit against the hardwood of the floor. As Steve made his own way in, she paused, then carefully pulled herself up Steve's leg and anchored herself there as he moved forward, shield half-raised and blocking them both as much as he could make it.

As they peered around the corner, Brooklyn made a familiar annoyed grumble in the back of her throat and let go of Steve, slithering down and landing with a slight thump. He recognized the figure, too.

"I don't remember giving you a key," he said, lowering his shield.

"Do you really think I would need one?" Fury asked.

Brooklyn let out the irritated moan that she reserved specifically for Fury – a noise that Steve had only ever half-heartedly tried to stop her from making – and left Steve to the conversation, disappearing to the back of the apartment. She didn't want to have to deal with Fury again in one day, not after their last talk. She was very intelligent, was completely capable of understanding human speech, and she didn't like the idea of Project Insight any more than Steve did, especially seeing the way that it angered Steve.

He almost wished she had stayed, however, because she might have, somehow, been able to give them some kind of warning. Her hearing was more accurate than Steve's, so she might have been able to—

Well.

"Stay with Fury!" Steve yelled at Brooklyn, and watched her waver before hissing furiously and standing protectively over Fury's prone body.

_Thank you for listening to me_ , he thought, and then he was gone.

 

xliii.

The staff almost didn't let him into the hospital because he had Brooklyn with him, but he moved past them with the STRIKE team and didn't let them protest. He stood in the observation room with Hill and Natasha and waited.

_Do you know him?_ Steve wanted to ask Natasha. _The man that shot Fury. You knew they were Soviet slugs. What aren't you telling me?_

Don't trust anyone, Fury had said.

There was always one person that he could trust, though. Brooklyn had been with him for so long – almost three years, or over seventy, depending on how you looked at it – that he couldn't really imagine life without her. He couldn't imagine any possible way that she could ever betray him.

Then, he hadn't ever imagined life without Bucky, either, and look where he was now.

The heart monitor flatlined.

 

xliv.

Brooklyn hadn't lifted her head from where it was lying pressed against his neck for almost two hours now. She shifted her weight around slightly, compensating in the way that she always did at Steve's movements, but she seemed almost listless. Steve was feeling pretty tired himself, from everything that had been going on, but he forced himself to keep moving until a time that he could lay down and just sleep.

Everything was falling apart so quickly, and Brooklyn was zoning out of everything, and it almost felt like his breath was going to catch in his throat like it had whenever he'd had an asthma attack back before the war. Before the serum.

Exhaustion was dragging at him harder than it had even for the past two years, when he was constantly tired and trying to cover it. This...sensation of everything crashing down...it was how it had felt when Bucky had enlisted and he hadn't been able to make it in, when he'd heard that the 107th had been decimated by HYDRA forces, when Bucky had fallen and he and Brooklyn had pointed the Valkyrie down at Arctic waters.

This was everything dissolving away again, but almost everything had been taken from him already, so what really was there left to lose?

He was sure there was something. The world always seemed capable of taking things away from him.

Steve stepped into the elevator after that unsettling conversation with Pierce. He had made the choice to listen to Fury – he didn't trust Pierce. He had never met the man before and even if – or maybe especially because – he called Fury a friend, the man was a politician, and had worked in SHIELD for most his life. Steve wasn't about to tell him sensitive information.

He huffed a quiet laugh at the thought of what Fury might be saying about how he was placing so much trust in _his_ word, but a dead man couldn't betray him. He had worked with Fury for two years now and despite the mess with Phase 2 and the Lemurian Star and everything, he had respected the man. Peggy must have chosen him as her successor for a reason.

Turns out, it was a good thing that Steve had listened to Fury. Brooklyn broke out of her doze and started clawing at faces almost immediately, while Steve started fighting back as best he could. The small confines of the elevator worked against him, but they didn't exactly help the STRIKE team either.

Then a fresh team was approaching where the elevator was stuck and Steve was out of options. He gauged the distance to the ground and didn't like it, not without water down there to help catch his fall. They didn't really have a choice.

"Come on, Brooklyn," he said, and got as much of a running start as he could.

 

xlv.

It was easy enough for Steve to get into the hospital, to get to where he needed to be going, but it was much harder for Brooklyn to do so. She had to fade herself so much that even Steve, who was used to looking for her when she did so, almost lost track of her.

"Good job," he whispered, and then made himself not turn around while he was walking through the hospital, Orpheus trusting that Eurydice was following him. He could barely hear the click of her nails against the ground, walking carefully as she was, but he _couldn’t_ look back. It was suspicious enough that he was walking through the hospital with his hood up, but turning around to watch a supposedly empty hallway would draw attention he really couldn't afford.

He barely had a moment to take in the fact that the vending machine was empty of both gum and flashdrive before Brooklyn let out a quiet cry of warning and Steve saw Natasha's reflection in the glass.

Steve couldn't really bring himself to be too surprised.

The only issue now was how much he was willing to trust her.

 

xlvi.

It may have been safe enough to let Brooklyn follow him around in the hospital, but they couldn't do that in the mall, so Steve left her just outside.

"Half an hour, tops," he said. "Keep hidden."

Brooklyn warbled a note of agreement and they went in.

Just about half an hour later, they were walking quickly out. Steve whistled Bucky's call sign for Brooklyn and she slunk behind them, knowing they still weren't out of danger and she couldn't hop up on his shoulders like she usually did.

It was easy enough to hotwire the truck – things hadn't changed that much between then and now, and Steve had done it before in this century, just to make sure he still could – and then they were on their way, Brooklyn curled up between them on the seat, her head resting on her front legs.

 

xlvii.

"You've never been here before, have you?" Steve murmured to the dragon perching on his shoulder. He looked around at Camp Leigh, dully missing it – or at least missing how simple everything had been. Bucky was alive and Peggy knew him and they may have been at war, but he still _had_ them. He still had everythingthat he knew.

Every _one_.

They looked around carefully, but didn't find anything until the bunker. Brooklyn's claws started clenching anxiously as they went down, stilling slightly as they stood in front of the photos hanging on the wall. She made a low, sad sound in the back of her throat at them.

And then—

"Rogers, Steve. Born 1918. Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna. Born 1984." The camera swiveled, seeming to look right at Brooklyn. "And what is this?"

Natasha opened her mouth, hesitated. Swallowed. "This...isn't just a recording."

"Indeed not, Fräulein," the voice said primly. Something about the accent, the voice itself, was eerily familiar, but Steve couldn't quite pin it down. "I may not be the man that I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945, but I am."

A picture flickered across the screen and Steve felt like all the breath had come out of his lungs; he was caught in a moment of pure, unadulterated rage – and envy. Why was Zola still alive? What did he do to deserve to be living, when _Bucky_ fell and was still out there somewhere in the Alps. They couldn’t even go for his body and yet _Zola_ —

As he explained his “life,” such that it was, Steve only got angrier.

“But truly,” Zola said silkily, “What is that creature you have with you, Captain Rogers?”

Brooklyn was bristling, almost like a cat, and hissing dangerously. She knew enough to recognize the man before them, distorted as he was by the computer.

“That’s none of your business,” Steve said sharply, but he was given away by the fact that as he answered, Brooklyn had finally had enough and lunged forward sharply. “Brooklyn, no!” Steve yelled, grabbing her before she could complete her movement. He didn’t know if Zola had set any traps around any of the computers housing his brain, but he wasn’t willing to take any chances.

“Brooklyn,” Zola mused, and something like surprise colored his voice. “ _Oh_. How fascinating…”

Steve closed his eyes for a second. This was exactly what Bucky had been trying to avoid by leaving Brooklyn safely at headquarters instead of taking her on that mission. He didn’t know if the dragon would have been able to help any, if anyone could have, but Bucky thought it was worth it to leave her behind if it kept her away from Zola’s attention.

Now, in a way that no one should have been able to, Steve had managed to do that anyway.

“How did you get here?” he asked roughly, determined to drag any answers out of this man that he could.

“Invited,” Zola said smugly. Everything only went downhill from there, and it was almost a synchronized movement that had Steve and Brooklyn destroying the main computer that Zola was taunting them from.

As the missile swept down, Brooklyn knifed into the air, screaming angrily at Zola, before she landed safely with Natasha and Steve. She wrapped herself desperately around them, her tail tucking around Natasha's waist and her wings spreading as far over them as she could reach, as if she believed that she could protect them from the fire and stone raining down.

Somehow, between her and Steve's shield, they actually made it out of the bunker mostly in one piece.

 

xlviii. 

There was a dragon sitting on Sam's counter, watching him make breakfast. He had to admit, that was not a sentence he ever thought he'd see himself saying, because even being part of the Falcon program hadn't prepared him for this. Given, the Falcon program was completely mechanical, no matter how fantastical they made the paratroopers wearing them seem to outside viewers.

But really.

A _dragon_.

How had it gotten to this?

…right, it was when Captain Asshole America started lapping him during early morning runs.

The dragon – Brooklyn, he had to think of her as Brooklyn, even if his mind was still stuck on _dragon_ and _everyone we know is trying to kill us_ – nosed at the plate of bacon he had set out. She looked up at him and he smiled.

"Go ahead," he told her. "I'll let the others know breakfast is ready."

A dark tongue darted out and a couple of pieces of bacon were already gone, disappearing quickly down Brooklyn's throat.

Steve and Natasha had given a brief summary of what had led them to ending up outside his backdoor, covered in dust and looking shaken all to hell. They didn't seem to have too many dangerous injuries – or at least, nothing that was external other than a few scrapes, nothing that Sam could help with unless they performed a full medical scan. He tried to let that reassure him, and was glad that the dragon had gotten out of it alive as well. She seemed like she was infinitely more fragile than humans, like a cat would be. She was just so _small_ , compared to most depictions of dragons, those in Beowulf or Tolkien or even Harry Potter. She was more like Daenerys' dragons, slowly growing and small in size compared to the dragons of old.

Being stuck in ice for 70 years would probably stunt anyone's growth, though.

 

xlix.

Steve finally felt centered. He felt more in control than he had felt for much of the past two years, excepting the fight against the Chitauri. But even that didn't settle over him with the sense of familiarity that this did. He knew war. He knew _HYDRA_ , and he knew how to beat them.

He had once sworn that he would tear down HYDRA, wouldn't stop until every part of it was captured or dead, and he thought he'd done that, he thought he'd destroyed it. But he had failed to burn the stumps behind him and they had infected Peggy's SHIELD, everything she had worked so hard for.

A zero sum? Zola didn't know what he was talking about.

"Well, I guess I just like to know who I'm fighting," Steve had said to Natasha. But that wasn't quite it. He was angry, sure, that they had survived, like they always did, while Steve lost everything. Even so, that gave him the pleasure of pulling it down again and making sure that this time, _everything_ burned.

The familiar routine of planning out a raid, of figuring out how they were going to take down HYDRA this time – it was almost comforting, in a scary way. He hadn't missed this, precisely, but he knew how to do it.

And god, he was still just so angry. Angry at the whole world, it seemed. He could pretend that this didn't bother him so much as it did, put on a front for Natasha and Sam, but in a way he was grateful. That awful tiredness that seemed to be dragging at him was replaced with a sweet rush of fury and focus. He could almost pretend that everything was all right, because this was what he was good at, this was what he had trained for and spent years doing. It was what he had been.

Getting Sam's wings was easy enough compared to everything else, and then Steve, Natasha, and Brooklyn were menacing Jasper Sitwell on a roof.

Sitwell was backed up against the edge of the roof, Steve holding onto the front of his jacket tightly, and he was afraid but not enough, still trying to bluster his way out. He was _so sure_ Steve wouldn’t follow through, wouldn’t _actually_ toss him over the thin lip of the roof.

“It’s really not your style, Rogers,” Sitwell said.

"You're right. It's not," Steve told him as pleasantly as he could make himself, trying not to smile that too-toothy, dangerous grin he'd picked up from Brooklyn somewhere in the past couple of years. Apparently it was alarming to bystanders. "It's hers." And Natasha kicked him off the roof into Sam's waiting arms below.

Bantering with her helped him keep some of the simmering tap of anger at bay. It was almost scary, just how angry he was, if he stopped to think about it. So he tried to not, tried to just focus on the mission, but use enough of it to keep himself out of that pit of awful fatigue and despair.

 

l.

They slid to a stop outside of the car, Sam rolling off and away as they did. Brooklyn got up into the air immediately, looking for any kind of vantage point. She dashed back down almost immediately, just ahead of a hail of bullets.

Then Steve was too busy to pay much attention to what Brooklyn was doing, because he was too concerned with shoving Natasha out of the way of the incoming missile. Crashing through the window of the bus was unpleasant, even with the shield absorbing most of the impact. Deflecting the bullets, running after Natasha—

The Soldier.

Steve was being pushed harder than he ever had, in any fight. The Soldier moved unbelievably quickly, almost like Steve himself could, like he’d been injected with a serum himself.

Something about that pulled at him, and his attention caught for just a second on Brooklyn, hovering in the air with all her focus directed on the Soldier. She wasn't making any move to get involved with their fight – with any fight – and Steve could swear she looked as shocked as a dragon could.

Steve ducked the knife, slamming his shield around into the metal arm, then grabbed the Soldier and _threw_ him—

Even as Steve stared in shock, Brooklyn came screaming down out of the sky. And then Bucky was gone, and Brooklyn was gone, and everything was collapsing down around Steve again and he couldn't _breathe_ , so he didn't resist as Rumlow and HYDRA secreted them away.

 

li.

He knew someone was following him. Not someone – something. The pet. Target One's reptile.

_Dragon_ , something in his mind whispered to him.

He spun, firing off quick shots into the air. There was nothing there. He narrowed his eyes, tucking his gun back into its holster and continuing on his way to the safe house. The...dragon...was good at hiding. He needed to be in a more open area, where it couldn't duck behind buildings and into crevices.

A flying enemy as small and quick as the dragon was something to be considered carefully. He had already run through the best possible solutions to dealing with the man with the metal wings. Anyone helping the targets must also be eliminated.

The faint susurrus of wings behind him and—

_he was staring down the scope at targets he had never seen before except_

_that was the target he had just been assigned the shield was the same but he wasn't aiming at the target he was aiming at men behind him and there was a gleeful chuckle as the dragon dove down from the trees, landing next to him as he breathed out, fired_

—he shook his head, stumbling with the sensation of vertigo. He was malfunctioning. He needed to get back to the safe house, both for his arm and so his handlers could debrief him. He didn't know what was happening to him.

Sitting in the chair and he was lost again, memories of pain, flashes that he didn't understand except for the aching emptiness, because there should have been people with him—

"But I knew him," he said. _I know I did..._

There was something else, rising up like the surety of that statement, and it was the way that the dragon had screamed out in the sky on the causeway, the way that she stooped into a dive and followed him all the way here, because even now he knew that she was waiting for him. He knew her, too.

"Brooklyn," he said, awed.

Something startled and dark flashed across Pierce's face. "Wipe him," he commanded. "Now!"

He waited just a little too long, caught in the web of rising memory, and wasn’t fast enough to resist as they pushed him down, bands clamping down around his arms and guard shoved in his mouth.

_No_ , he thought, panicked. _No, you can't do this to me._

He bucked desperately, but the machine was already whirring down.

_No, no, oh god no not again you can’t do this to me again brooklyn please save me brooklyn STEVE PLEASE—_

lii.

Maria had noted the absence of the dragon, because it was extremely odd seeing Rogers without her. They were attached to each other. She wasn't actually sure she had ever seen Rogers without Brooklyn, given if she wasn't on his shoulders, she was somewhere up in the air nearby.

That was what she assumed the case was this time. The dragon must have avoided capture by HYDRA and was following the van from the air. Maria knew that Brooklyn was smart enough to figure it out when they escaped and switched to the van to get them to Fury's hideout, but she couldn't help but feel a tingle of unease makes its way up her spine when she didn't see any telltale glimpse in the sky.

Of course, Brooklyn could hide herself. But surely she would have made some sign by now. She and Rogers were almost too co-dependent to function.

By the time that Natasha was being treated and Rogers hadn't made any kind of move to sneak outside and find his dragon, Maria knew that something was wrong.

She clenched her jaw through the explanation about the Winter Soldier – about Barnes – and Pierce and what, exactly, Rogers' plan was. Hearing all of that, how deep the betrayal went, Maria couldn't help but agree with him.

(She worried about Natasha, too, because she was friends with the woman, and she knew what this had to be doing to her. The way that it was probably tearing her apart, even if she never showed it. If doing this would help Natasha, even a little bit, then Maria was even more on board with it.)

"SHIELD, HYDRA, it all goes down," Rogers said grimly. "I'm burning it all down to the ground."

"Your scaly, fire-breathing pain in the ass can help with that," Fury noted, leaning back and wincing the faintest bit. "Where is she?"

"Safe," Rogers said, and there was a wealth of emotions all tangled up and around each other that Maria couldn't quite interpret, but one thing that she read quite clearly – _I hope. I hope she's safe._

 

liii.

The Soldier stepped out of the bank into sunlight. He knew that he had just been wiped – he could always tell, from the blankness of everything around him. It was rare that they didn't wipe him, but he had a few memories left to him, memories of missions and training and information on handlers, and he could feel the traces that meant they had taken something from him recently. It didn't matter, though. Nothing mattered but the mission.

The mission...

Something caught his eye – a flash of blue against a building's window, darker than the morning sky and moving.

_I know this_ , he thought, and purposefully didn't think anymore as he held out one arm.

The dragon swooped down and landed on it, clambering her way up until she was situated around his shoulders, and everything suddenly felt _right_ with the world.

"I know you," he said, reaching up to pet her carefully. He didn't know how he knew her, he didn't know why he knew she was female

_—know if it's a boy or – didn't actually check – my dragon—_

but something that had been achingly empty in his heart had filled up and settled. He hadn't know that, either. That he'd had a heart.

That didn't matter either, though, not against the necessity of following the orders that HYDRA had given to him. By all rights, he should have turned around immediately to turn in the dragon, because he was well aware that they wouldn't be happy with her being here. But he didn't. He rubbed the dragon's head one last time and started walking.

"We have a mission to complete," he said.

The dragon let out a faint whine of disapproval, but she curled tighter around him and pressed her nose against his neck. _I'm not leaving you,_ she seemed to say.

 

liv.

He didn't bother to take out many of the pilots that were trying to help the Captain – his mission. Target One. He disabled them, but found himself oddly reluctant to actually kill many of them, despite what his orders were. The dragon helped him a little, bounding around and distracting them, even occasionally blowing past and scraping sharp claws against important tendons and muscles, making them collapse to the ground in pain.

"Come on," he said, roughly pulling a pilot out of one of the quinjets and taking the man's place. The dragon fluttered her way inside and sat carefully, making sure she didn't interfere with the Soldier's ability to use the controls. He steered them up the nearest Helicarrier.

Once there, when dealing with Target One and his companion with the wings, the dragon stayed out of it. She made a sound of distress deep in her throat and refused to get involved, wheeling sharply away instead. The Soldier didn't feel a pang at her actions.

Of course, the Captain managed to stay on the ship. The Soldier could see him clinging to the side, already swinging his way back up. He knew from the mission briefing where the man was heading next.

He started towards the control bridge, paused. He stared up at the sky, trying to spot the dragon, but she either wasn't nearby or in the sky or was hiding. Still trying not to think too hard about it, he whistled. Not any kind of cadence he was familiar with, just one that felt right, like the weight of her on his arm.

The dragon swooped down, reproving gaze fixed on him, but she still followed him into the Helicarrier's depths.

 

lv.

The Soldier stared at the man standing on the other side of the bridge. The dragon had settled back around him as they waited for Target One to appear, but she couldn't seem to look at the other man. He had thought she was his, by the way that he had seen her following him around, but it looked like she belonged to the Soldier more than she ever had belonged to the Captain.

Something about the uniform he was wearing pulled at him, like everything about the dragon and the mission that they were running, and his orders were getting all tangled up in his head. He didn't know what he was supposed to do. He didn't know what about this man was so—

"People are gonna die, Buck," the Captain said. "I can't let that happen."

—confusing.  

The Soldier didn't know what home or love or warmth felt like, but if he did...if he did, it would be this man.

He cocked his head the slightest bit, darting a glance down at the dragon, and everything about him rebelled at what he was going to do next, but he had to know. Even the overriding impulse to obey his handlers, to follow out his orders, couldn't stop him here. Not since he had seen the dragon.

Not since he had seen this man.

"You know me," he said slowly, and saw the Captain's eyes light up with something like hope. "And...you know her. The dragon. What's her name?"

"Brooklyn," the Captain said, eyes still bright, and the name felt like finally coming home.

 

lvi.

Steve slammed the last chip home and they barely had enough time to get back to the deck and to the quinjet that Bucky – or the Soldier, because Steve wasn't sure which of them he was talking to – had commandeered to get up to the Helicarrier in the first place.

"Do it," Steve bit out into his comm, as soon as they were safely in the air.

Everything that SHIELD and HYDRA were was burning and it was glorious.

Less glorious, however, was the fact that when they hit the ground, Bucky vaulted out of the quinjet and looked at him for a long moment, stroking at Brooklyn's head, and when Steve took his eyes off him for a _second_ , he was gone.

 

lvii.

The few short hours that Steve had spent separated from Brooklyn before the attack on the Helicarriers were nothing compared to now. Even the knowledge that she was safely with Bucky, for sure this time, couldn’t comfort him.

For over two years – or over seventy, depending – they had been together, balancing each other in their grief and confusion at this new world that they found themselves in. Now, Steve was all by himself. He kept turning to look for the dragon, kept expecting her heavy weight on his shoulders, kept listening for the little chuckles or trills that she made.

Nothing.

It left him feeling oddly bereft, but…

But Bucky was _alive_.

That made everything worth it.

He was in the wind with Brooklyn, of course, and Steve didn’t know how much he had remembered, if he had remembered anything at all or was simply playing along or…

Steve wanted to believe, though. He wanted to believe that Bucky could heal, that he was just taking time to clear his head or readjust to the modern world or _something_ , and that Steve would see him again. Honestly, for all he knew, Bucky wanted Steve to leave it alone, to leave _him_ alone, and not follow him.

He couldn’t do that, though. They had always followed each other everywhere, from playground to war to the future. Steve wasn’t going to give up on him without a fight.

And anyway, there were a bunch of HYDRA holdouts that they could take out on the way.

“When do we start?” Sam asked, standing beside Fury’s grave, and Steve grinned, that vicious smile he’d picked up from Brooklyn.

“Now,” he said, and, “Let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my awesome friend, [farrokhbulsara](http://archiveofourown.org/users/farrokhbulsara), for editing this fic and also for enabling me by providing even more ideas for Dragons AUs, good god.


End file.
